Wednesday, November 30, 2005

The outrageous nonsense in this Forbes article: Gapology 101

That Forbes would publish such outrageously false, borderline-racist nonsense is truly stunning. The "reporting" here is so shoddy that I scarcely know where to begin, but here goes:

1) The article in many places fails to differentiate between closing the achievement gap and eliminating it ("the prime objective of educational policy is to eliminate the "achievement gap""; and "It is not possible to close the achievement gap."). WHAT?! The author of this article is making the leap that because it's impossible to ELIMINATE the gap in achievement between disadvantaged kids and better-off ones (which -- let's be realistic -- is, unfortunately, probably true, at least on a broad scale), that it's therefore impossible to CLOSE the gap! On its face, that's a ludicrous logical leap, and in fact there's TONS of evidence that the achievement gap CAN be closed if poor kids get good teachers.

Of course there's plenty of rhetoric surrounding NCLB, at teacher colleges, etc. about eliminating the achivement gap, but that's just setting an ambitious goal. Everyone knows that the real goal is to CLOSE the gap materially.

2) The author confuses efforts to close the achivement gap with efforts to get more money spent on schools serving disadvantaged kids. While one might think that these two efforts go hand in hand -- and, in fact, many organizations such as those mentioned in the article pursue both of these strategies -- they are NOT the same thing. Simply because big increases in spending in certain cities (such as Kansas City) haven't resulted in higher student achievement or a closing of the achievement gap does NOT mean that one can conclude that it's impossible to close the gap. The only thing I conclude is that pouring more money into a horribly broken system isn't likely to yield favorable results -- duh! -- BUT, fixing the broken system WILL likely yield favorable results and -- here's the key -- spending more money COMBINED with fixing the system is likely to produce the best results.

3) This is a bald-faced lie:

Absolutely nothing has happened to suggest that the federal government will succeed in this effort, and a few brave educators are beginning to say out loud that the cause is hopeless. William J. Mathis, writing in a recent issue of the Phi Delta Kappan, compares current plans for closing the gap between poor and middle-class kids to "an exercise in ritualistic magic."

In fact, while it's WAY too early to see much of an impact, the achievement gap IS closing (albeit very slightly) and I think there's a good argument that NCLB deserves much of the credit. And quoting some random guy in some random publication (what is Phi Delta Kappan?!) to the contrary doesn't make the lie any less of a lie!

4) Without carefully defining what he means by "intelligence" and "cognitive ability", this paragraph is meaningless at best, racist at worst:

The reason that the gap will never be eliminated is that intelligence rises with socioeconomic status. Estimated correlations between social class and IQ range from 0.3 to 0.7 (on a scale where 0 means no connection and 1 describes two variables marching in lockstep). Those figures tell us that the poor and disadvantaged have less cognitive ability than those from higher-status families. Cognitive ability predicts scores on achievement tests.

Here's more of the same, making the same mistake:

learning is a joint venture. It also depends on what students are capable of assimilating. Everyone hits a brick wall at some point. With some students it may not happen until they are exposed to quantum mechanics. With others it happens with long division. Most students are well inside those two extremes, but the fact remains that disadvantaged students hit the wall earlier and learn less.

Of course rich kids have higher test scores than poor kids -- is that what the author is saying when he blithely talks about "intelligence" and "cognitive ability"? Or is he saying that, at birth, kids born into wealth have more brain power/intellectual potential than kids born into poverty? This is a much trickier assertion. Yes, there's evidence for this as well, but it's actually quite remarkable how nature spreads out innate intelligence. I can't tell you how many people I've met who were born into privilege and who've had every educational advantage, yet are complete dopes; and, conversely, how many people I've met who come from modest beginnings but are brilliant.

But being brilliant and actually developing one's brain and achieving in life are, sadly, very different things. This is the real tragedy of our current K-12 public school system -- overwhelming evidence shows that if you're poor or minority, you're likely to go to a dysfunctional school and -- here's the key -- be taught by mediocre or lousy teachers. YET -- this is what really destroys the core underlying assertion in this article -- many studies show that if you give disadvantaged kids equally good teachers, who set equally high expectations, THEY ACHIEVE AT VIRTUALLY THE SAME LEVEL!!!!

Thus, rather than throwing up our hands and reaching the tragically wrong conclusion that "It is not possible to close the achievement gap," we should instead be asking, "How can we fix the current system so that EVERY child -- not just the privileged ones -- attends a consistently excellent school and is taught by consistently excellent teachers?"

The latest preposterous idea in educationland is "closing the achievement gap." Educators everywhere are enlisting in the campaign and somehow not noticing that it can't possibly succeed.

Easily the strangest meeting I've attended this year was a symposium at Columbia University's Teachers College that took place on Oct. 24 and 25 before an audience of maybe 550 academics, foundation bureaucrats, toilers in think tanks, government officials and others who make a living off the education sector. The symposium was the kickoff event of an activist organization within the college called the Campaign for Educational Equity. (It calls itself the "action arm of the college.")

The equity theme here has two components. One is that the prime objective of educational policy is to eliminate the "achievement gap"--the gap between what's learned in school by disadvantaged kids and what's learned by middle- and upper-class kids. The other element is the notion that the U.S. would be much better off if only we devoted more resources to the education sector.

Pursuing the latter, Henry M. Levin, a professor of economics and education at Teachers College, argued in an op-ed piece in the New York Times appearing shortly after the symposium that immense gains are to be had from keeping underachievers in school. High school dropouts, he noted, earn $260,000 less over the course of their lives than do high school graduates. But it is wildly unrealistic to assume that the students who drop out would earn as much as those who graduate if only they had hung around for four years--an assumption ignoring tons of evidence that the dropouts are a population with trouble hanging on to jobs and have lower ability levels. The data tell us that the average dropout has an IQ that puts him at around the fifteenth percentile of those who graduate. Not exactly what employers are looking for.

The achievement-gap angle has been incorporated in the "mission statement" of the college, which now includes this declaration: "Teachers College is dedicated to promoting equity and excellence in education and overcoming the gap in … achievement between the most and least advantaged groups in this country." In his opening remarks at the symposium, TC President Arthur Levine proclaimed that he and his colleagues were now focusing all their resources on this one issue. Other speakers repeatedly referred to the gap as both a moral outrage and an economic disaster. It would have been hard to find a member of the audience not in total agreement with these preachings.

What's so strange about all this? Just one little thing: It is not possible to close the achievement gap. The mission statement is a summons to a fool's errand. The reason that the gap will never be eliminated is that intelligence rises with socioeconomic status. Estimated correlations between social class and IQ range from 0.3 to 0.7 (on a scale where 0 means no connection and 1 describes two variables marching in lockstep). Those figures tell us that the poor and disadvantaged have less cognitive ability than those from higher-status families. Cognitive ability predicts scores on achievement tests.

In partial defense of the 550 educrats murmuring approval of TC's mission statement, it must be said that they are not alone in failing to understand that the gap cannot be closed. Harvard, too, has an Achievement Gap Initiative, run by Ronald F. Ferguson of the Kennedy School of Government. (Ferguson was a speaker at the symposium.) Brown University's Annenberg Institute for School Reform is also committed to fighting the gap. And, of course, the federal No Child Left Behind program, which became law in 2001, claims to be doing likewise and on a much larger scale. The objective of the federal law, wildly unrealistic but carved in legislative stone, is to get all American children up to a "proficient" level in reading and math by 2014.

Absolutely nothing has happened to suggest that the federal government will succeed in this effort, and a few brave educators are beginning to say out loud that the cause is hopeless. William J. Mathis, writing in a recent issue of the Phi Delta Kappan, compares current plans for closing the gap between poor and middle-class kids to "an exercise in ritualistic magic."

It is perhaps natural for professional educators contemplating the gap to concentrate on teaching ability--on what schools can deliver--but learning is a joint venture. It also depends on what students are capable of assimilating. Everyone hits a brick wall at some point. With some students it may not happen until they are exposed to quantum mechanics. With others it happens with long division. Most students are well inside those two extremes, but the fact remains that disadvantaged students hit the wall earlier and learn less.

Which brings us to the ultimate mystery about the educational equity campaign. How could the leaders of Teachers College commit themselves to an enterprise guaranteed to fail? It turns out (surprise!) that they don't think it will fail. I asked President Levine how the achievement gap could be closed, given the evident gap in learning ability, and received a spirited reply that boiled down to the argument that IQ doesn't matter in achievement. He said in a telephone interview: "Your assumption that one group has higher learning ability than the other--there's no evidence that that's the case."

I also spoke with Michael Rebell, executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity. He was recruited by Teachers College after mounting a monumental lawsuit that, after 12 years in the courts, has won a verdict (still being appealed by the state) providing for additional outlays of $5.6 billion for public education in New York City. Asked about the IQ dimension of the problem, Rebell was also dismissive: "I'm skeptical of all the attention going to that area."